


Luxury

by kangeiko



Category: Rome
Genre: F/M, Yuletide, Yuletide 2007
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-25
Updated: 2007-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-11 02:22:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/107317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kangeiko/pseuds/kangeiko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The morning after Octavia's marriage to Mark Antony, she goes to visit her mother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Luxury

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jaybee65](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaybee65/gifts).



> For jaybee65, for Yuletide 2007.

Octavia leaves before dawn, the sweat barely dried on her body. She guesses that Antony will suppose it revulsion, and she doesn't much care. Better revulsion that pragmatism.

At her mother's bedchamber, she does not wait for an answer to her knocking.

"Mother?"

Atia's clothes are in disarray, but they are still clearly evening clothes, not the loose linens of nighttime. Her rouge is smudged, and there are pillow creases on her face. "Oh," Atia says, quietly. "It's you."

"Mother?"

"Now's not a good time," she says, soft and tired. "Go away until I can summon up some anger."

"Mother." She steals forwards, one tiny step at a time. Her body aches: deep bands of heat and bruising across her belly, where Antony had wrapped his arms; soreness and uncomfortable dampness inside; his sweat, rank across her, searing through her skin. _Like rolling in a bath of vipers,_ she thinks, then takes another careful step forwards.

Atia's eyes narrow, more with vexation than true anger. "I'm not joking, Octavia! Go back to your husband. Go finish ... consummating."

"We've finished consummating." Her mother's eyes open; nostrils flaring. "I need a purgative."

In one swift, fluid movement, Atia rolls herself up on her elbows. "What a stupid thing to say, girl. Go lie down and raise your legs and hope the bastard seed takes!"

What an odd morning, Octavia thinks, and winds a thread of hair around her fingers. She used to do that incessantly as a girl, and had never quite stopped, despite her mother's despair. She'd also been helplessly in love with her husband - her former husband - and that had also never quite faded. Not that Atia knew of that, though. Perhaps she supposed it sufficiently far in the past to stop worrying.

"I don't want his child," she says, helpless, though she knows it to be true stupidity. "And I'll not allow it."

"_You'll_ not allow it? _You_?"

Octavia does not cringe from the slap.

After a long moment, Atia moves away, suddenly tired-looking. "We don't have those luxuries anymore," she says, looking to her bed. Then, "go back to your husband, daughter."

*

fin


End file.
